The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

Chapter 35

Chapter 35560 wordsPublic domain

year after year. The intention at first was to create a fund and use only the interest but immediate demands were so urgent that the money subscribed was appropriated as needed and an audited account given by the national treasurer at each annual convention.

[52] In the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Chapter LXXIV begins: "The death of no woman ever called forth so wide an editorial comment as that of Miss Anthony, except possibly that of Queen Victoria, whose years in public life numbered about the same. On the desk where this is written are almost one thousand editorials, representing all the papers of consequence in the United States and many in other countries, and they form what may be accepted without reserve as the consensus of thought in the early years of the twentieth century in regard to Miss Anthony and the work she accomplished."

Over eighty pages of extracts from these editorials are given and several memorial poems. A large number of magazines in this and other countries contained sketches and articles from which quotations are made. Tributes of her biographer were published in the April numbers of the _Review of Reviews_ and the North American _Review_, and on the week following her death in _Collier's_ and the New York _Independent_.

In Chapter LXXI and following in the Biography are full accounts of Miss Anthony's death and funeral services.

[53] By vote of the convention these volumes were to be presented to the club or individual member under whose auspices a new club of not less than twenty paid up members had been formed and remained in active existence for not less than a year and was properly certified. The following year the Executive Committee voted to place 300 sets in public libraries.

[54] This work was continued year after year until the list became far too large to publish. Not one organization, save a few connected with the liquor business, ever adopted a resolution against woman suffrage except the anti-suffrage societies themselves.

[55] One of the striking features of the recent national suffrage convention in Chicago was the large number of very close votes on woman suffrage bills that were announced from different States, all taking place at about the same time. While the convention was in session, the Chicago charter convention defeated woman suffrage by a tie vote. The Nebraska delegates got word that it had been lost in their Lower House by a vote of 47 to 46, with a tie in the Senate. In the Oklahoma constitutional convention, where the gambling and liquor forces as usual lined up against woman suffrage, it came so near passing that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the West Virginia Legislature, where the last time it was smothered in committee, the House vote this time stood 38 yeas to 24 nays. In South Dakota the measure passed the Senate and came so near passing the House that a change of seven votes would have carried it. In the Minnesota House the vote showed a small majority for suffrage but not the constitutional one required. All these close legislative votes followed hard upon the remarkable vote in Vermont, where the suffrage bill passed the House 130 to 25 and came so near passing the Senate that a change of three votes would have carried it.--_Woman's Journal._